


A quite unlosable game

by some_stars



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 13:41:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_stars/pseuds/some_stars
Summary: It's different when it's for the job. (Or, Alec and sex: a history.)





	A quite unlosable game

**Author's Note:**

> Please see the end for more detailed content notes. Title is from [Annus Mirabilis](https://allpoetry.com/Annus-Mirabilis) by Philip Larkin. Thanks to [Minim Calibre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minim_calibre/pseuds/Minim%20Calibre) and [sasha_feather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_feather) for betaing.

**ONE.**

Puberty was a problems in the specs, a built-in flaw. This is how they explained it, back at Manticore, the same blank-faced fact sheet info-dump way they explained weaponry and tactics and tourniquets and chokeholds. Information at Manticore came in solid chunks when Manticore deemed it necessary, which was daily for something like communications tech and a lot less frequently for something like "Manticore's plans for you and your life." So they paid attention.

And puberty, Rivera told them, was a problem. Couldn't just turn it off, of course; a pint-sized X5 was deadly enough, but hardly the return on investment you wanted to offer the U.S. government. Manticore needed its super-soldiers full-grown, so the show had to go on--pesky side effects and all.

"Puberty is a problem," Rivera said, "because it breaks down discipline. Let me be more precise," she paused, looked around at each of them, "sex breaks down discipline. Sexual attachments, and most of all romantic attachments." Spitting out the word with the contempt they all shared, for Ordinaries and their two-man teams and their wet squishy reproduction via parasites, of all the nasty things. 

"You probably can't imagine wanting to do any of that," Rivera said, "but you're, what, twelve now? And they've raised you all up in close quarters, triggered your familial instincts, a little too much probably--" The shadow of the 09ers rushed over them like a storm cloud, just for a breath.

"I'll tell you something, though. Ordinary kids your age feel the same way. Think the whole mess is disgusting. For about another year and a half." Now Rivera laughed, a short dry bark. "Fact is, we're herding the first batch of teenagers around right now, and we're sure as hell going to do a better job with you lot."

And when the topic was their bodies--their tools, familiar and honed and suddenly threatened from within--494 and the others gave her their full attention. Because it was a happy ending they were getting, Rivera assured them. No mess, no fuss, no pair-bonding like geese, just a careful, titrated, chemically _aimed_ release of hormones everywhere but the troublesome, useless areas. "We'll phase that back in when you're 17 or 18," Rivera explained, "when your neural wiring starts to settle into mature patterns. One developmental crisis at a time, see? A hell of a lot more dignified than how the Ordinaries do it."

And they all agreed, they nodded and 494 thought how relieved he was that the vaguely-hummed rumors of trouble again weren't going to recoil on him and his (again). How proud he was not to be an 09er, a weak deserter, a scared little kid. How if they'd only understood enough to stick around a little longer, maybe they'd have got it too, how Manticore wasn't scary, wasn't the monster or the enemy or the overwhelming opposition forces. Manticore was what they were for, and Manticore was what made them better.

494 wondered if any of the 09ers were doing that, breeding like Ordinaries did. (It never crossed his mind to think of the runaways separated from each other, scattered across the country, lost and alone. They were _they_ , traitors and deserters but still--X5s didn't exist in the singular, not longer than the mission required.) 

Maybe they were. Maybe they were doing it right now, they were a year older after all, maybe they were pregnant and making each other pregnant and rutting like filthy animals with the Ordinary world's dirt all over them.

 

**TWO.**

The rules were: no more than one partnered sexual encounter per week. No partnered sexual encounters with anyone from your core unit or your most recent field assignment. No partnered sexual encounters outside the designated facilities. No repeating partners more than once every eight weeks. No encounters lasting longer than forty-five minutes, all encounters to be recorded and subject to review. And, of course, no encounters allowed outside of official rec time.

 _Voluntary partnered sexual encounters are permitted solely for the purpose of maintaining optimum condition,_ the fact sheet informed them. _Do not engage in a partnered sexual encounter for any reason other than physical relief from distraction and unnecessary discomfort. Remember, **all** sexual behavior is a privilege that may be revoked at any time!_

One week after 494 completed his second solo mission--short term military ops, no deep cover, but they were _his_ and he'd done them, done good--he began the induction treatments. From that point on, he was officially permitted to engage in partnered sexual encounters, but it took almost five months for him to want to. The fact sheet for males had explained the physiology of involuntary unconscious arousal, but it still unsettled him enough that he tried not to think about the whole mess while he was awake--and it was a mess, that was exactly what it was, completely uncontained.

His body taking for itself--knocking him back in his own head like he didn't get a say at all--that threw him bad enough the first time it happened, after he'd read the fact sheet. It was nothing new, not being in control, but in his sleep, alone in his head--and how it _felt_ \--

It happened more and more as the hormone titration stepped up: every few days, then nightly, then twice a night. Eventually Rivera called him down to Medical, and he was already undressed and waiting when she stopped by exam table six and glanced at him, then at her tablet, then at him again.

"You've been experiencing a higher rate of nocturnal emission than the other males at your stage of puberty," she said. "Do you also experience arousal while awake?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. He wanted her to look back down at the tablet, but she didn't.

"And do you address it? Manual release," she continued, when he didn't say anything. "Masturbation."

He had, once. It had bothered him, for reasons he didn't understand. Dreams and a mess were strange enough; the bright white flash of a fully conscious orgasm shook him--frightened him. He'd lost track of his whole body. It had felt like drowning, but good, and that was bad too.

"No, ma'am," he said.

"No? I assume you've been completing your assigned readings, 494."

"Yes, ma'am."

"So you understand the concept."

"Yes, ma'am."

She rolled her eyes. "Then do it. Sexual arousal is a distraction, and washing the sheets every night is a waste of time. It's to be expected at this stage, of course, but there's no need to exacerbate the problem."

He wasn't sure if she wanted a response, but she kept looking at him, so he gave her one. "Yes, ma'am." He wondered if she was going to make him do it now, to see if there was any problem with his functioning. That happened sometimes in Medical: after a bad break or tear or other damage was repaired, they wanted to test it, make sure the problem had been taken care of. That was nothing unusual at all. He thought, _she will, she will, she'll make me try to do it right here, and--_ Something bad would happen. He didn't know what, couldn't put the data together, couldn't form a projection, but it would be bad. He knew it would be bad.

But she was already walking, two tables over, eyes on the tablet as she swiped through the records. "Dismissed, 494," she called without looking back at him.

After that he got used to those few white seconds of absence. He stopped minding, mostly, how much it reminded him of the breath training tank. He still didn't like the mess.

The females were lucky. _No muss, no fuss,_ Rivera said, just once, in a different voice than 494 had ever heard from her before, _and take it from me, you all dodged a bullet there._ 494 wasn't too clear on the details, but not long ago someone had found a couple tampons--dropped from some doctor or janitor's purse, must have been, and 644 had snagged one and snuck it back to the dormitory where they'd all passed it around, pushing the plunger down into the barrel so the wad popped out the other end like a bullet, and picking at the tightly packed fibers, and trying to imagine… But none of that, they had pills for that. No fuss. No parasites to worry about. Lucky, and clean, and he was jealous.

That was one reason he tried a female first. The fact sheets encouraged a lack of discrimination in this regard, as much as they encouraged anything, which wasn't much. 494 didn't need that particular encouragement, but he appreciated the diagrams. He'd memorized them at first sight, of course, but he revisited them the morning after an image of 583 had slipped to the forefront of his mind during manual release. _Image_ didn't do it justice. They'd spent the whole past week paired up in cross-unit individual hand-to-hand training, and 494 could smell her sweat, see the dark patches spreading under her arms and across her upper back. He could smell something else, too, strong and thick--like sweat but richer, like his own semen but less sharp, and strongest between her legs. As soon as he imagined her face he could smell it all again, and it only took fifteen seconds more for him to reach orgasm.

She asked him the next day before he could ask her, and a faint whiff of that same smell tickled his nose when she did. He wondered if she could smell it, or if she was too used to it. He wondered what he smelled like to her.

"Good," she said when he agreed, and nodded her head sharply. "There's a room free now. I checked this morning."

They checked in, took the plastic container of supplies they were handed, took two towels, and went in and undressed.

"What do you want to do?" 494 asked. The constant background hum of the fluorescent lights seemed louder in here, somehow. The walls were so white they seemed to glow when he focused on them for more than a few seconds.

583 shrugged. "I don't know. Not intercourse, I tried that last time. It hurt."

He frowned. "The fact sheets said it wasn't supposed to hurt." Any pain experienced during sexual activities, the fact sheets said, was an indication of possible damage and should be reported to Medical. Manticore needed all systems in working order. Missions could be unpredictable. Any skill might be called for at any time.

"Mine said it might for females," she said. "But only a little, only the first time. It hurt a lot, though. I think it was 416's fault. We were supposed to go slow."

In the end they agreed on oral stimulation. He did her first, because he wanted to smell her again, and see what it tasted like. After a few minutes, when she'd started pushing up against his face and breathing faster, she told him to put a finger inside her.

"No, no, stop," she said, almost as soon as he did. "Go back to just your mouth."

He did, but he couldn't stop feeling the phantom wet heat of her clasping his finger, and without really noticing what he was doing he started to masturbate. He kept up the oral stimulation while he touched himself, and he was so focused on the taste--overwhelming, _everywhere,_ every breath--that his own orgasm surprised him.

583 pushed him away after her orgasm and handed him one of the towels.

"Better than 416?" he asked, rubbing the harsh-textured cotton over his face, enjoying the almost uncomfortable roughness. His skin felt more sensitive after orgasm, he'd discovered, even in other parts of his body. And he didn't like 416. Nobody liked 416.

"Much," she said, and smiled. It was a sharp little smile on a sharp little face, pale and freckled, with thin, chapped lips. "I wish I could pick you again next week."

He didn't look up at the camera, but he felt his shoulders tense for a second, and saw that 583 saw it. "It's probably the same with anyone," he said, and she nodded. Her eyes did flick to the camera, but too fast for it to have recorded. Maybe one frame.

"Yeah, probably. You're probably nothing special."

"I wouldn't say that," he said. "I can beat you in hand-to-hand, that's pretty special."

"You can _not._ It's three to three."

"Four to three."

"Wednesday was a draw! We didn't finish before time!"

"Yeah," he said, grinning, "but I was _going_ to win."

"You're a liar," 583 said, "and we still have twenty-two minutes, and I want to try oral sex on a male. I haven't done that yet."

He was already mostly erect again. The fact sheets had said it wouldn't take very long, not until he was older. It didn't take very long to orgasm again, either--they'd said that too--and they checked out with fifteen minutes left before time.

He tried a male next, then two more females and another male, to be sure he wouldn't start feeling any pair-bond urges. He didn't. It was a relief, and after that he mostly stopped bothering--about once every couple months, whenever he started thinking about somebody in particular while masturbating. A sexual encounter in the white room always made that stop.

He didn't go with 583 again for almost a year. They had intercourse and didn't talk about anything. She didn't seem to be in any pain.

 

**THREE.**

The trick to working with Ordinaries, 494 found out pretty quick, was to just mirror back at them whatever they were sending out. There was training, of course, vocabulary and dialect drills, and social simulations, and four-hundred-page geopolitics briefings, and food practice with all the most pungent, slimy, bitter, and/or painfully spicy dishes they might possibly be expected to consume without blinking while undercover.

Manticore prepared them thoroughly for every aspect of every mission, but after 494's first mission with significant civilian contact, it was clear that wasn't going to be enough. Roleplaying and social sims, no matter how many potential event branches there were to memorize, didn't even come close to the utter vertigo of trying to translate practice scripts into words and movements that would actually get him anywhere on the ground.

This was how, on a two-week assignment in Pakistan with a small squad of Ordinary soldiers as support-- recon, report, execute, sterilize; he hadn't earned anything more interesting yet--494 started playing cards for money. His age had already sent a ripple of unrest through the squad the first time he gave them their orders; refusing the invitation to poker, 494 could tell, would draw unnecessary suspicion. Anyway, it passed the time, and it seemed like it might come in handy again someday.

Playing to his full ability would draw a _lot_ of suspicion, and it wasn't like he needed the cash, so he made sure to throw a few games each time, but he couldn't resist giving himself a little room to show off. After all, this wasn't a deep cover assignment. They knew he was supposed to be some kind of special. 

One night after he beat one of the Ordinaries, Harrison, for the eighth time in a row, Harrison said, "Shit, man, you cleaned me out," and then, after a quick glance toward the closed door, "how about I suck you off instead, call it even?"

The phrase wasn't familiar but combined with a significant flick of his eyes, Harrison's meaning came across clear enough. When 583 had done that she'd ended up coughing, then ordered him to hold still while she made herself go back again and again, forcing her mouth down four more times until she could do it all the way-- _I want to get it **right**_ \--and he hadn't wanted to do it again after that. The start had felt good though, with her tongue, and he knew Ordinaries liked to receive oral sex, especially the males. It was a normal behavior.

So 494 just told Harrison, "Yeah, sure," and leaned back some in the creaking metal chair, spreading his legs a little. He stayed casual and loose and watched for cues. Harrison got down between 494's legs and splayed both palms across his cotton-clad thighs, squeezing a little. Then he glanced up, eyebrows raised. "Man, I'm not gonna take your damn dick out for you."

That was friendly tension in his voice, still, and his fingertips pressed against 494's thighs, ten hot hard points. The card game was an excuse. This was friendly. 494 smirked and opened his fly. 

"That good enough, princess?"

He didn't know where the word came from--he'd heard it from someone, one of the soldiers, someone back at Manticore, he didn't know. But his instincts were usually pretty good. They were good here. Just send them back whatever they're sending out to you.

Harrison snorted, amused, and said, "Yeah, that'll do, pretty boy. Now shut up."

He'd been worried he might not get an erection--remembering 583 choking herself didn't exactly, what did the Ordinaries say, get him in the mood--but the way Harrison had sunk gracefully to his knees, the quick slanted grin he flashed 494 now, made for a good distraction. And he was physically attractive, measured against contemporary American standards--tall, deep brown skin, lively eyes; especially the eyes--and he was the only one of his four-man team who hadn't had any trouble letting 494 take command, probably because he was only a year or two older himself, while the others were all in their mid-twenties. Probably also, 494 hypothesized, because he obviously didn't like the other three very much.

Harrison grabbed 494's erection with one hand and moved his head in. He didn't cough or choke, but he didn't try to go all the way down either. 494 watched him and held on tight to the sides of his chair until it was over. 

Harrison spat on the ground, then grabbed 494's canteen off his pack and took a drink, swished for a second, spat again. Then they went back to playing, without stakes, just to pass the time. 494 made sure to lose the next couple rounds.

It was days later before 494 thought to wonder if he'd be punished for engaging in an unassigned sexual encounter with an Ordinary. Harrison was dead by then, so he decided not to mention it.

 

**FOUR.**

He only kissed Rachel, twice in the pool and once in Berrisford's study. He'd never done that in the white room. There hadn't been any diagrams about it.

After what happened in the swimming pool, he spent the three days until the next lesson trying to figure out whether this put him at a tactical advantage or disadvantage. Her mouth hadn't felt like anything to do with sex, exactly. Just soft and wet, barely touching him. What could he do with that? What could he use it for?

Mostly she'd tasted like chlorine, damp.

 

**FIVE.**

Manticore didn't torture its soldiers. It used necessary force to subdue, and sent them to Psy-Ops for re-indoctrination, and sent them to solitary for discipline and their own safety and the safety of others, and it all only felt like torture, from the inside. He couldn't tell anymore where his skin began and ended, all the sensation twisted around itself and burning. He couldn't focus his eyes. Someone touched him, cautiously at first and then roughly when he didn't respond. He tried to curl in on himself, away from that rough hand, but moving triggered a wave of nausea that flattened him motionless.

"Well, look at this." The voice seemed to come from miles away, but it filled the room, like rolling thunder, ultrasonic screeching. He could feel it in his teeth. "Looks like someone's been bad." 

The hand curled around the back of his neck and pulled his head up at an uncomfortable angle. The face above his was--nobody, some nothing staff, not even a tech. 494 didn't recognize him, but the uniform was the muddy blue jumpsuit of the janitorial staff, the same kind of uniform that had been passing in and out for a while now. Mopping up after him. Manticore didn't torture its soldiers, Manticore didn't make you lay in your own waste for hours while you tried to remember how to stand up. It had all been very tidy. The air smelled like bleach, now, when he could smell anything.

The man crouched down so their faces were right up close. "I saw them drag you in," he said, smiling. "I didn't know they ever brought the pretty ones down here still breathing. Guess this job has a few benefits after all."

The man rubbed a thumb hard against his barcode, jamming in a little jolt of pain that ricocheted back and forth all through his body, like it couldn't figure out where to go. 494 tried to jerk away, but his muscles weren't working right and the attempt just left him twisting in the man's grip, making it worse.

"Don't," he managed to say finally, and wanted to flinch away from the quaver in his own voice.

The man laughed. "Still trying to give orders, huh? Still think you're something special. But you're not, see, not right now. Not to me. You're nothing special at all."

He stood up, hauling 494 with him by the neck and another hand grabbing pincer-like onto his shoulder, and flipped 494 onto his back on the bunk. The impact knocked a low moan out of him, a hoarse strange sound. He'd never heard anything like it before.

Then there was more talking, but the words prickled across his skin like drops of water from a pressure hose, a thousand stinging needles blurring into one hard wave. Thick fingers pinched at either side of his jaw, opening him up. The pressure-pain made his whole body seize up for a moment, but deliberate movement still seemed very far away. It pulled him back a little, though. He'd been fading.

"Some soldier you are," the man said, starting to breathe harder, "some killing machine, just a little _bitch_ \--"

It didn't actually hurt much, 494 realized. There was some nausea, and his lips were tearing a little at the corners, but that was about it. Mostly it was just the heat and the movement--not that much, he could tell in a distant way, it wasn't so much and it certainly wasn't pain, but it crackled through his burnt-out nervous system and made him want to pass out. But he couldn't, so he relaxed where he could manage it and stopped trying to breathe, which helped quiet his gag reflex. Tried to concentrate on the sting of bleach in his eyes, because it made him think of chlorine, and being kissed.

After the man left, 494 faded back into sleep, or something close to it. The taste was rancid in his mouth when he woke up again, but he felt strong enough now to crawl to the sink by himself, so that was all right. 

Anyway by the time they finished with him, it was all long gone.

*

He noticed, after, that every face in the dark blue jumpsuits was new. Not that they were supposed to notice that kind of thing, but none of them could help it. _When in hostile territory, always remain alert. The smallest detail can ensure the success or failure of an entire mission._ Those faces weren't supposed to get close to them, but across the mess hall and down cinder block hallways and behind doors swinging closed he'd watched them all his life, memorized their schedule without actually noticing them. Now they were all different.

He asked 672 about it during a chem-war scenario drill the day after he returned to regular duty, keeping his voice low while they rifled through a fake lab closet full of unlabeled jars of liquid waiting to be identified (odor, viscosity, color, evidence of restricted access) and combined into three functioning mass dispersal units. The chemical training rooms got sealed off during drills. Probably someone was still listening, and of course there were cameras mounted in all four corners of the ceiling--one blinking steadily, the other three emitting a nearly-inaudible hum and visible only as a slight crack in the tiles--just like every other room in every other building. But it _felt_ safer in here. There was no reason not to feel safe anywhere. There was no reason to ask in the first place.

"The whole staff changed six days ago," 672 said. "Nobody said anything. Is it important?"

"No." He found the first ingredient and grabbed it off the top shelf, then set the jar on the work table. It needed half a minute to settle before opening. "It doesn't matter. None of them matter." Three drops of the next one, now, and one slow stir. The fumes that drifted up stung his eyes, but it was well within the acceptable damage margin for X5 mucous membrane tissue. As long as they finished in the next eight minutes, he'd be fine by the end of the day. They hadn't been allowed to bring goggles or gloves this time. He might not have time to find protective gear in a field situation; you couldn't rely on any tools except yourself. "I don't know why I noticed."

"Must be a new company," 672 said, unscrewing the top of the jar. This was their sixth drill today, and she worked around his movements as if they were her own. She could put together a mass dispersal unit in her sleep by now, probably. They both could. Drills were supposed to be boring; that was how you knew you were learning. "I hadn't thought about it, but I guess jobs like that might be subcontracted out to private companies. That's how they do it in the regular forces." She sounded curious, now, happy to seize on any distraction. "I wonder what happened to the old one?"

"It doesn't matter," 494 said again, because it didn't. His eyes hurt, and his nose, and the roof of his mouth. 672 wasn't keeping her voice low. No reason she should have. Still.

 

**SIX.**

He didn't get another solo assignment for a while after his first long-term solo op went south. That was his own fault, of course, but he struggled not to bristle when he was assigned a partner for his next field op. It wasn't a two-man job, not really--not two X5s, at least--but there was 511 when he boarded the jet, waiting for him. Nobody had even bothered to tell him.

Not that it made any difference to him how Manticore chose to allocate their resources, not that it was any of his business. But he still felt hot and taut inside as he took his seat next to 511 and tore open the little packet of pills. There was a second packet waiting; that was for one hour before landing. He shook the first packet out into his hand and dry-swallowed all six of them. Then he closed his eyes and waited to go under. It didn't take long at all.

He waited a whole day to say anything, until they were on the ground and all set up. "You here to keep an eye on me?"

"That's my primary objective, yeah." 511 spoke easily and casually, and his body language was loose and calm, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. They all knew how to do that by now. Sometimes you sent back the signals you were getting, and sometimes you sent out your own, and the Ordinaries would mirror you and relax without even knowing why. The fact that 511 was using it on _him_ \--maybe not even consciously, but still, it felt like some kind of betrayal, and 494 focused on holding the tension in his shoulders, keeping his back straight.

"Was I supposed to figure that out?"

511 shrugged. The gesture looked perfectly at home on him. "Got me. Are you gonna be a pain in my ass about this the whole time?"

The colloquial speech fit comfortably in 511's mouth the way the shrug fit his shoulders. 494 had taken all the same classes once he'd been tracked for deep cover single-target work, and he'd scored perfectly on all his assessments, but none of it had ever felt comfortable back at Manticore.

Right now, though, he was in the back of a bar in Tashkent drinking watery beer out of a dirty glass with a card in his wallet identifying him as the new acting assistant field director of a local NGO. His name was Daniel Hartman, according to the card, and he was out for a drink with his coworker Adam Bureyev (according to a different card), a local who'd just started work there that same day. They'd hit it off, despite Daniel's stilted Russian and seemingly nonexistent Uzbek. There were witnesses.

He was sweating through his shirt and the ceiling fan above the table was going about one rotation per minute and creaking like it would fall down any second. The beer tasted foul and his left thigh still hurt from the final series of injections the day before, and the toilet through the open archway right next to their table had been backed up for weeks, by the smell of it. His next status report wasn't due for another thirty hours.

He'd never felt more comfortable in his life.

"Dunno," he said, and drained his glass. "You gonna be a such a dick about it the whole time?"

511 grinned, and 494 grinned right back.

*

"New orders?" 494 frowned. "The gala's in five days. We're not going to be able to take him out quietly before then, that was the whole point."

He was sprawled on the lumpy, beaten-down sofa in his apartment--Daniel's apartment--Daniel's and Adam's, now, because two days after they'd both started work, Adam's apartment had flooded, so his new American friend was letting him crash for the weeks it would take to get the pipes fixed and the water damage cleaned up and the opposition party candidate assassinated.

(They'd actually sent in a team to sabotage the pipes, just in case anyone got it into their head to snoop around. 494 was almost impressed. Manticore didn't do anything halfway.)

The couch was the only furniture in the apartment except for a double bed with a mattress that had to be at least twice 494's age, a couple of scuffed plastic chairs that had clearly been stolen from an office somewhere, and a wooden table that looked like it had actually been handsome, maybe even beautiful, back before a few decades of kicks, spills, stains, and general abuse such as people sitting on it, like 511 was doing right now.

"They don't want quiet anymore. Some political thing, who cares." 511 shrugged. "Sandoval said we still take him out at the gala, but scrap the fake heart attack, just shoot him. And he wants you on the girlfriend."

He couldn't help a smirk. "Think I got that covered."

"Yeah, yeah." 511 rolled his eyes. "I mean on her officially. I'm doing Volkovich, you're doing Lola."

He stiffened, sat up straight. Volkovich's girlfriend hadn't been mentioned as a potential target, or even a potential access point. It was common knowledge, they'd found out pretty quick, that the man kept her and his illegitimate kids by her in his mansion, and that he doted on all three of them, so if this had been an extortion job or if they were meant to make some kind of example, 494 would only have expected it. But she had nothing to do with anything political--"I stay clear of all that stuff," she'd told them the other night, giggling between sips of what was supposed to be a Cosmo but smelled more like straight pink vodka and swaying up against first one of them, then the other, flushed and bright-eyed, glossy black curls bouncing on her shoulders.

She did some charity work, the kind of clean-water, help-the-children inoffensive causes that offered feel-good photo ops and no chance of bad publicity ("and I love kids, I really do, kids are great, I _have_ kids"). That was how 494 and 511 had run into her in the first place; that was how they'd ended up out having drinks with her and then in bed with her. It hadn't been anybody's _plan_. Lola hadn't been part of the plan.

"Why me? You've got access. You could do it."

"Oh, come on, were you even there that night? I mean, me and her clicked pretty good--" 511 grinned, just the way he'd grinned when Lola had shifted on 494's lap and leaned in to whisper loudly in 511's ear, _You boys got anywhere you can take a girl?_ "But I'm just saying," he continued, "I'm not the one who got invited back for a second round. She _likes_ you."

_Under the impression there's a romantic interest on her part? ...Do you think she **likes** you?_

The smirk felt skewed on his face. He was cold, suddenly, and he didn't even know why. "Everybody likes me."

"Yeah, well, everybody isn't fucking the first viable opposition candidate in thirty years," 511 said. "And everybody doesn't sleep down the hall from his kids."

494 frowned. "The kids too?" He'd seen them, once. Two little boys, six and eight, and the older one took after his mother so much it was creepy.

"The kids, the girl, the whole package. Clean slate." The look 511 gave him wasn't what you could call sympathetic--he wasn't that stupid--but he wasn't smiling anymore, and there was a kind of tired shrug in his eyes, a what-can-you-do look. Nobody liked jobs with kids involved, but nobody ever complained, either. "Apparently they want to send a message."

"Yeah, they do that," 494 muttered absently, and felt cold all over again, just for a second.

"Politics," 511 said, and waved a hand dismissively. "Ordinaries always getting themselves worked up about something or other. None of our business."

494 shook his head. "Guess not."

"Anyway, the new plan is, I take Volkovich out during the reception speech. Meanwhile Lola gets you past the security detail and into the east wing, and then you kill her, kill the kids, and get out."

Much later, remembering this, he would think, _was I okay with that? Was I really?_ Right now he only nodded, once, and started mentally reviewing the plans of the mansion that they'd been given, trying to account for the new necessity of a fast escape and a change of target.

"So listen," 511 said. "You want a hand with Lola?"

"Thought that was my assignment." He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out 511's game, but he seemed to be on the level.

"It is," 511 said lightly. "I just thought you might want a little help."

"Sounds like a one-man job to me."

"The thing is, you've got five days, and you need to make sure it's a sure thing. Just because you hooked up a couple times doesn't mean you can swoop in and make a move Friday night, right under her boyfriend's nose. I mean, probably you could, because she'd probably go for it, but you should lay the groundwork first. Get her hooked, then reel her in."

"Lay the groundwork," 494 repeated, slowly.

"You know. Get her into it. Sweep her off her feet. _Romance_ her." He grinned, a little sideways. 494 frowned.

"Look, what is this? You think I can't handle it?" He waited. 511 didn't say anything, and he felt something twist in his stomach. " _They_ think I can't handle it."

"No, man, it's not like that. Just..."

"Just what?"

"Well, I mean. Do you know what to do?"

494 stared at him, confused. "I've already done it. Twice."

"Yeah, you've had sex with her, but it's different when it's for the job. You've never done that, right?"

A sharp cold stab of pain flashed behind his eyes, then disappeared as fast as it had come. He shook his head. For a second he could smell chlorine, heavy in the air, stinging the back of his throat, but then it was gone.

"The main thing is, you gotta keep your head. Even if it's good."

"Keep my head while working. Got it. Any other pearls of wisdom?"

511 rolled his eyes. "The point is, smartass, you don't want her to _know_ you're keeping your head. You want her to think she's got you so spun you can't think straight. Women like that, it makes them feel good."

(He heard his own voice in his head: _I can't help it. You've got me all turned around._ )

"This kind of thing must be easier for females," 511 went on, after a second. "I saw 583's last job on the news last week, that senator making all the noise about budget reappropriations, remember? Real charmer." He grimaced theatrically. "Now if that one had been my assignment, I wouldn't have had any trouble keeping my mind on business. I just hope for her sake he liked it from behind."

"Does that happen?" 494 asked, although he somehow felt like he shouldn't. "Do males ever get sent on that kind of job?" 511 was older, got approved earlier, went on two solo missions before 494's first and five more since then. Not exactly an expert on the inner workings of Manticore, but he was the closest--and friendliest--that 494 was likely to get.

511 shrugged. "I don't know, I've never heard about it. You gotta figure the dice would roll that way sooner or later, though. Later, I hope. Let the X6's handle that shit." He smirked. "Bet you could pull it off, though. You're pretty enough."

"Fuck off," 494 said, automatically and without heat. 

"Yeah, yeah." 511 leaned forward on his hands, focusing in. "Okay, so, tell me how it went last time, when it was just the two of you. She called you, right?"

Advice followed, on the seduction and the killing both, including a pantomime that at one point made him wonder if he was about to be kissed, and completely unsure if he wanted to be. But 511 moved on briskly and 494 followed him, forgetting the feeling of hands on his face, playing Lola, playing at being romanced.

"Take it slow but touch her hands a lot," 511 said, and "You want to get her when she's got her guard down but before you start taking your clothes off," and "The kids you can just shoot, you're going right out the back window anyway."

It wasn't like 494 wouldn't have thought of all this. Most of it. But it was...reassuring, to get advice, to walk through it step by step with 511. 494 loved the independence of solo work, loved being dropped in place and given an objective and allowed--expected--to figure out problems on his own. It was the opposite of the first fifteen years of his life. In some ways, though, he couldn't help but miss the training exercises, the teamwork of the early group missions. There was still a part of him that couldn't conceive of an X5 in the singular. Not for long. His initial anger at being paired up with 511 for supervision seemed distant, out of reach.

He wondered, _why don't they always send us in pairs?_

*

He was two seconds shy of suggesting to Lola that they retreat to her private quarters when the tap on his shoulder made him whirl around too fast, faster than Daniel Hartman would.

"Daniel!" 511 declaimed, with the boisterousness of the fake drunk. "Where have you been all night?" He slung an arm around 494's shoulder and leaned in, murmured, "No more job, they're pulling us out. Make a quiet exit."

He made some excuse to Lola, ignoring the puzzlement in her eyes, and the two of them wandered at an unremarkable pace across the hall, out the door, two blocks to the rendezvous point where they waited for the car, and the whole time 494 couldn't stop feeling aroused.

Lola's body had been pressed against his, and his body had responded with the kind of avid stupidity that made him understand why Manticore restricted sex, if this was what it did to your mind--to your body below the level of your mind, on some autonomous involuntary level where your heart beat and your guts digested. It hadn't mattered that he'd been five minutes away from snapping her neck, or maybe that had just--helped. Crossed wires, something biological, but his body still felt excited. Unruly, stupid.

Or maybe it was relief. He couldn't think about that.

Instead he let himself think about sex. About Lola's face when he slid inside her, the sharp good taste of her, her smile from across that crowded entry hall, the tilt of her head, the surprised little puff of breath when he touched her so lightly. He thought about the white room, about that time with the Ordinary soldier. About 511's hands on his face. 

*

"Hell of a mission," 511 said, as they sat down in the airplane seats, buckled the straps.

"Something like that," 494 said. "Looking like it turned out to be a waste of time, though."

511 shrugged. "It's not coming out of my budget. And anyway--" He flashed a grin, even though the handlers were coming into the back of the plane with the pills and could see them. "We got something out of it, didn't we?" And when 494 didn't respond, he went on, lowering his voice, "Lola."

The ribaldry in his voice--the camaraderie, the sound of his grin--wasn't fake, precisely. It only felt...constructed. Like something they were putting together, the two of them, piece by piece. 

494 had discovered, these past weeks, that he liked working with 511. So he grinned back, and said, "Yeah, Lola," mirroring 511's tone, slotting another piece into place between them as the pills were pressed into his palm.

 

**SEVEN.**

Alec had sex with fourteen people in the almost-a-year between Manticore and Terminal City. Pretty much entirely in the first few months--the hooker he found right after Manticore burned, whose name he immediately forgot. A few groupies after cage fights. A handful of girls from Jam Pony, before his reputation started to precede him. A couple of boys at Crash, when he felt like switching it up. It was always easy enough to get, and he felt...this urge. Not for the sex itself; he knew what that felt like. This was something in his head. 

Maybe it was the same part of him that had set up his little import-export arrangement at Manticore, after the explosion and the move shook things up. He hadn't done that out of any real need--no use for money in the barracks, and there wasn't anything he'd wanted from the outside bad enough to risk getting caught with it. What he'd liked was the arrangement itself, running it, slipping the guards a few pills and getting a nod back, knowing who was who and where he could get what. He'd liked knowing something Manticore didn't.

So when the strung-out-looking woman put her hand on the sleeve of the leather jacket he'd just mugged a guy for and asked if he felt like showing a girl a good time, his first thought was: don't get distracted from the mission again. Only there wasn't a mission anymore. Except "survive," maybe, and that was entirely up to him. It was a strange feeling, and he didn't like it. So he told her yes. They had sex that even he, with his limited experience, found unremarkable, but the motel--filthy, threadbare, badly lit--was the opposite of the white room. It wasn't even like the transgression of sharing Lola with 511, doing something that he could claim was a necessary part of his cover but that he secretly knew was for him. There was no conceivable way he could have found himself in this situation if Manticore had still existed.

When he came the sensation was muted, but he felt a fierce, almost nasty joy anyway that wiped out all rational thought. He wondered if Ordinaries felt that way every time. No wonder they couldn't stop doing it.

 

**EIGHT.**

"You want--you're in _what?_ "

Max's face hardened instantly. "You know what, forget it. I should have known I couldn't trust you with this."

And that hurt--would have hurt more, but he could see her face slamming shut, see her stiffen up and brace as she turned and headed for the door with fast, long strides. They were all so tough but not a one of them knew how to take a hit, not where it counted.

"Max--" He caught up with her, grabbed her shoulder, got his arm knocked back, but she stopped and turned to face him--eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder, but he'd take it. "I swear to god, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, okay?"

Her eyes met his and she stared hard at him for a minute. He tried to let his face just be honestly confused, which wasn't too hard, because he was. Finally she seemed to find whatever she was looking for and she looked away, sighed, started to pace the little room she'd pulled him into.

"I'm in heat," she said again.

"Okay, and I repeat: what the hell?"

"It's a Manticore thing. Cat DNA." She stopped walking, facing away from him. Crossed her arms. "Two or three times a year, I get...like this. Like I need..."

"Sex."

She didn't flinch, but he could tell from the set of her shoulders that she wanted to. "Yeah."

"Or you die?"

" _No_ , I don't _die_. I just--" She turned around. "If I can wait it out it's fine, it's only a few days. But I waited it out the last couple times and it gets worse each time and I can't _think_ \--I can't focus, and that's dangerous for everybody now. It's not just me anymore. We're in the middle of these negotiations with the sector police, we've got people going on supply runs through the sewers practically 24/7, there's factions trying to split off right under my nose and I have to be this--great _leader_." The word flew out of her mouth like a bullet. "I have to do it. Or everybody dies."

"Max..." he started, not sure what was supposed to come next, but she kept going over him anyway.

"I'm not gonna let people get killed because I didn't have my head on straight. So, I need help." She met his eyes again and her face was hard, closed off, but he was getting better at seeing past that. Her chin lifted up just a little, like she was daring him to argue with her.

"Well, shit," he said, finally, which seemed to go over okay.

"Tell me about it." And then, after a few seconds of silence, "You seriously didn't know?"

"I've never even heard of it. They must have fixed that after you broke out, when they fixed the other stuff."

"Other stuff? What other stuff?"

"The hormones and stuff, you know. Delay sex, discourage unit bonding. 'One developmental crisis at a time.'" It came out an almost perfect imitation even though he hadn't really been trying. He hadn't known just how clearly he remembered Rivera's voice. He hadn't thought about Rivera in years. "You guys really threw them for a loop when you busted out. Though actually I think it was the batch right before you that sold them on the whole postponing puberty thing. Apparently our predecessors were a real handful."

Her face wrinkled up like she'd tasted something gross. "Delay sex? Postpone puberty? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I--they did this thing, with hormones--they explained it to us," he said, feeling abruptly thrown off-balance. "Make us big and strong but without all the--"

 _Mess,_ he almost said, and stopped himself, because he didn't want to say that. He didn't, he realized, want to talk about this at all. Especially not with Max staring at him, her eyes all sad like he was the one who'd gotten screwed over here. When it hadn't been anything like that. 

"Never mind," he said. "Look--whatever you need, I got your back, okay? You know that." And he meant it, even though he was trying not to think about--well, the details. What exactly she was asking for, and what she wasn't. And whether he was going to have a problem keeping _his_ head on straight, if he gave it to her.

Her body relaxed a little. "Even if what I need is..."

"Something half the folks here in TC would gladly fight you for?" He smirked, didn't even try to dodge her half-hearted punch. "Max. You got screwed by Manticore, and I know what that's about. Plus, it's not exactly a hardship." Even less than she knew, and he was going to keep it that way.

He knew about staying professional. He knew how to do a job. The rest of it, everything he wanted, everything he sat on every day to be her right-hand man and keep TC alive--none of it mattered. Not that it ever had.

*

After the first time, the first night--after he'd rolled over onto her and started kissing his way to round two, because she didn't look anywhere near done--he said, "You know, if you want to be thinking about--well, if you wanted to be somewhere else. I think my ego could take it."

Actually it might be easier if she did. The first time he'd barely had a chance to think about it before he was _doing_ it, her knees bracketing him as she pinned him down and took what she needed. She surpassed his wildest expectations for frenzy, almost fury, putting teeth in her kisses and leaving bite marks on his throat, arching up into every touch almost before his hands met her skin. After a year of waiting it felt like too much, and it felt--strange. Like he wasn't really seeing Max in front of him, on top of him, but some sort of mirage built of fantasy and sex. None of it sat well with the knowledge that she was only here out of obligation to her screwed up genes. If she _acted_ a little more detached, maybe it would be easier.

But she'd gone abruptly still under him now--not dead silent, he still felt the rise and fall of her chest against him, but she'd stopped rocking up into his movements and her hands on his back felt frozen in place. "Did you learn that at Manticore? To be somewhere else?"

"Well, I didn't get it out of a self-help book," he snapped back, feeling suddenly off balance. He'd learned that at Manticore before Max and her unit had broken out. Everybody had. Everybody who'd survived, at least.

The way her eyes widened and the sharp hitch in her breath made him understand. "Not for this," he said, hurrying to get the words out, make her face stop looking breakable. "Not sex. That wasn't--there wasn't training. They didn't…" He trailed off, not wanting to say it even though it wasn't a lie, exactly. It hadn't been part of his training.

Capitalizing on a previously undiscovered natural aptitude wasn't the same as training. It wasn't the same as 644 and 583 being sent to the white rooms every other afternoon for three weeks while 494 and 511 kept running social sims and perfected their disarmingly clumsy Mandarin. (Who would have thought getting a language wrong would be harder than getting it right, but learning the real thing perfectly and then sounding like a rich midwestern white kid with a B.A. in Asian Studies was a trick even for an X5; especially, probably. Getting anything wrong grated on them.)

(He remembered 583, scowling, eyes watering, shoving him back down and repeating, _I want to get it **right** \--_)

Max was still staring at him, he realized, and he shrugged. "Seduction was never plan A for male operatives," he said. "As far as I know, anyway. Probably they figured it wasn't an efficient allocation of resources to train us for that when there were so few viable targets. Just statistics." Not quite just--thinking about it now, he suspected that whatever top-level committee had been in charge of designing the assassin curriculum had more men on it than women, and even if X5 males were subhuman to them, they were still males. The idea would have made the old guys feel icky, is what Alec figured. Score one for the patriarchy.

"What, like women never get assassinated?" She actually sounded indignant and he couldn't help a grin, faint as it was. Max rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Not all that often," he said. "And when they did, they didn't usually have an arm candy habit to use as cover. It's a man's world out there, Maxie."

That earned him a slap upside the head, and there was something so deeply dysfunctional about how much he liked that these days. Not to mention, he really didn't want to keep this conversation going. It had been a mistake to say anything in the first place.

So they had sex again--she made him do the work this time--and afterwards he was still in the stupid phase when he practically heard it click for her.

"Wait." She frowned. "What do you mean, it was never plan A?"

So much for the afterglow. Alec sighed and rolled off of her, flopping onto his back. "I mean, if they saw an opportunity, they took it." He closed his eyes. "Come on, Max, you knew that."

A couple seconds later he heard the hiss of her sharp indrawn breath through her teeth. "Rachel?" she said, quietly.

He nodded, not opening his eyes, even when her small hand came to rest lightly on his chest--almost gently. The way he'd seen her touch other people. "And a couple other times."

"I'm sorry," she said.

He shrugged, covered her hand with his own. He liked how it felt there. It was easier than looking at her, and better than not feeling her next to him at all. "It wasn't like Rachel, with the others. I doubt they wanted to risk me going off mission again. It was just--sex, sometimes. Somebody's girlfriend, somebody's head of security. Beneficial access. Nobody I didn't want." 

_It's different when it's for the job._

And wasn't that appropriate right about now, because what the hell was he doing here except another job? Only, Max didn't want him spun on her. That was the difference. 

*

She didn't stay the night, which stung a little even though he hadn't expected her to. "I might be back tomorrow," she said before she left, pulling her shoes on. "Sometimes it lifts after one time and sometimes it doesn't."

"Well, you know where to find me."

She flashed him something that felt a little like a smile and the door shut behind her. He lay back on the mattress and wondered if it was somehow taking advantage to try and remember what she felt like, then went ahead and remembered it anyway. He could still feel her heat in the palms of his hands.

This wasn't how he'd wanted it. When he imagined sleeping with Max--he'd long since given up trying not to imagine it--it wasn't tender or romantic, but it was _real._ Her turning to him, seeing something in him, the look in her eyes when she finally saw it. He'd imagined her fucking him annoyed, relieved, tired, starving. But Manticore had never been involved. Maybe that was what made it a fantasy.

She did come back the next night, and he realized quickly, with growing dismay, that he wasn't up for this. Not literally--she bit his lip and he sprung to attention, right on schedule--but the rest of him. His head. Now that he wasn't overwhelmed with the fact of what was happening, the new and abrupt reality of her shape in his arms, he could only focus on the tension in her body, the tight lines around her eyes, the way she absolutely did not want to be here, despite her body's best efforts to disguise it and the flood of hormones he could smell on her.

He told himself, _stop it. Max needs help and this is a job so man up and **do it,** soldier._

It worked well enough. She got on her hands and knees and he took his place behind her, fucked her and watched her back move and her hair spill down over her shoulders. She drove back hard against him, let out low grunts and softer, higher-pitched noises when he slipped one hand around in front. He knew what he was doing; at this point, he could do it in his sleep.

When they finished she lay on the bed in a straight line, hands folded under her forehead, misery radiating out from her like a heat lamp. He wanted desperately to hold her and he knew it would make things worse so all he could think to do was hurt himself down to join her, and without knowing what he was doing he blurted out, "At Manticore they let us have sex."

He felt her tense and hurried on, "After they triggered puberty. They gave us fact sheets about sexual development and told us we were permitted partnered sexual encounters and we had to go to this room, the white room. No pairing up with the same person too often. And it was always too cold in there, even though that was the only thing that room was for. And it wasn't--they didn't make us do it." A flood of number-names poured through his mind, a dozen first times. "They never _made_ me do it."

"But it was bad," she said. The sound of her voice made him close his eyes and something deep in his gut start to uncoil, slowly.

"Yeah. I don't know why." He wondered, sometimes, what it would have been like to have sex with 583 if they'd been normal teenagers, on the outside. Ordinaries. Not often, but sometimes. He thought he wouldn't even have recognized her. 

Max sat up a little. "I shouldn't have asked you for this. I just didn't know who else to trust. And I thought, maybe it would be okay, because..."

"Because I want you." He could say it, in the dark. She grimaced.

"Yeah. But you didn't want a threesome with Manticore."

"Hey." He reached over and put one hand on her face, and for a wonder, she let him. "I told you before, Max. You need my help, I got your back. I don't regret this, okay?"

"I do." One small hand came to rest on top of his on her cheek, holding it in place as he instinctively tried to pull back. "But not because--not that we had sex. Because it poisoned something good. Something possible. For us." She looked up at him. "It was possible, right?"

"It still is," he said, his chest tightening up. "Could be."

"Maybe." With the air of someone making a momentous decision, she shifted to lay against him, her arm coming up around his shoulders. Slowly he reciprocated, pulling her ever so slightly closer. Enough that he could feel her heart beating in the silence.

"Hey," he said eventually, "you know I don't _just_ want you, right?"

"I know," she said, muffled into his chest, and that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Part five is the rape scene, but the whole story contains depictions of sexuality where at least one person involved has issues of consent. The heat sex is mutually agreed-upon but it is very, very much a dubious consent situation and not happy.


End file.
